SPIRAL ART VERTIGO CITY

THE CITY OF GEARS!

Spiral Art! From a distance the city reveals itself
as an ominous gear endlessly populated by hordes of faceless
denizens. Moving in routine hypnotic unison the crowds spiral around
and around propelled the monstrous cogs. Lost in a sea of anonymity
the citizens begin to look, act and think alike as an assimilated
conglomeration of misdirected ideologies. There is no room for the
individual, no need for creativity and no tolerance for questions.
The tiny bubble people perpetually file in and out of little box
prisons to be shuffled in between the tombstone towers continuously
consuming with meaningless obedience.

The “Hey Apathy” series was my
first serious body of work as a fine artist. The drawings deal with
themes of urban alienation, conformity and the trappings of routine.
I started the drawings in the fall of 2000 in preparation for a small
student exhibition scheduled for the following spring. In order to
create the works I decided to limit my self to a minimal palette
consisting entirely of black India ink on white paper and using only
two simple symbols; tiny circles as people and rectangular blocks as
the buildings. I wanted to crete a nihilistic and vertigo landscape to express my fears for a world that seems to have gone so wrong.

As the images progressed I developed a diptych counter
part to the crowded city scenes. The second set featured apocalyptic
waves, similar to the nuclear test footage, annihilating the city.
The two variations combined to tell a tale expressing my concerns for
the cold commercial world we live in and a prophetic speculation of
things to come if we didn't change our ways.

The first installation took place in
the O.C.A.D. drawing and painting showcase featured in the hallways
of the colleges art department. I received a lot of positive
feedback and was interesting in expanding the scale of the works (at
that stage they ranged from notebook size to 4 ft. X 6 ft.) so I
decided to continue the project for the duration of 1 year. I was
able to book a larger exhibition space for Jan. 2002 and set out with
goal of creating 13 enormous mural versions of these existential
artworks.